Downhole packers are commonly used in many oilfield applications for the purpose of sealing against the flow of fluid to isolate one or more portions of a wellbore for the purposes of testing, treating, or producing the well. Non-limiting examples of fluid include: liquids such as oil and water, gases such as natural gas, and three-phase flow. The packers are suspended in the wellbore, or in a casing in the wellbore, from a tubing string, or the like, and are activated, or set, so that one or more packer elements engage the inner surface of the wellbore or casing.
However, after the packer elements have been set in the wellbore in the above manner, leakage across the sealing elements in the packer element can occur. This leakage is not usually detected until a catastrophic element failure occurs.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to detect packer element leakage as soon as it starts so remedial action can be taken to correct the leakage.